


the curse of having too much time to think about it

by 13thDoctor



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Related, Flashbacks, M/M, Memories, Past Character Death, Pre-Slash, Tenderness, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 20:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10544064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13thDoctor/pseuds/13thDoctor
Summary: Jack Rackham remembers Charles Vane.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This hurt to write so it might hurt to read. I apologize in advance.  
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated, and enjoy!

“What about Charles Vane?” Lydia asked in earnest. Her eyes were wide with delight, wonder.

The question was not unexpected, but it still filled Jack with a kind of dread and longing that he had for months been trying to press down. _Charles Vane._ Every time the name was spoken, a little more life was breathed into the ghost of the infamous captain, a little more strength woven into his tale. Piracy’s righteous cause legitimized by a coarse, irritating, chivalrous, formidable opponent to British governance. Jack often wondered if Charles would have allowed such whisperings, such blind admiration from strangers, in his lifetime.

No matter that answer, however, Jack felt Charles would allow this little indulgence in boasting. After all, the girl had named _Jack_ in her manifest of fame. Charles’ martyrdom was inevitable in this conversation, and he braced himself for memories of closest friend’s corpse. Though they never eclipsed memories of the man in his life, they were black spots in Jack’s vision, rotten, depressing pictures in an otherwise optimistic head.

So he took a shallow, imperceptible breath and looked away. He narrowed his eyes, hoping all of the heartbreak was gone when he looked back. “Charles Vane was…”

 

_Charles Vane was a part of Jack he could never erase._

_Jack had once threatened to cut off all of Charles’ hair. It was a stupid reason, really, one he could hardly remember, that they had argued. Or perhaps it was a bet. Jack hated sometimes that he could not remember those finer details, but he accepted that he was flawed; he told himself he thought he’d have many more years with Charles, so why bother recounting every bit of their lives?_

_Only a bit past his jaw at the time--they were young, then, God, how time flew--Charles’ hair was almost as important to him as his ship. Jack did not know this. At least, he didn’t know_ why. _But god damn Charles Vane saw those scissors in Jack’s hand and curled his lip like an animal._

_“Don’t,” he had warned._

_But Jack did._

 

“Charles Vane was my closest friend in the whole world,” he finished, a little breathless.

She was so, so impressed, and Jack so, so wanted to be impressive.

“Tell me everything about him,” she asked, and Jack could barely pick where to begin.

 

_With the primal Charles Vane that was the stuff of stories? Jack had run towards him with this scissors and been knocked down so swiftly that he saw stars. Charles was shirtless, having just woken, which made Jack think him vulnerable. Oh, what a mistake. If anything, that period of new wakefulness, of just having clamored out of a nightmare, made him more dangerous._

_“Fuck you, Jack,” Charles growled, and locked him in a furious chokehold. Only when Jack was gulping for air and flailing about, beating Charles’ shoulder with dwindling resistance, was he released. They broke apart, one to each side of Charles’ small room, glaring, gasping._

_Rubbing at his throat, Jack had sat back and regarded Charles with anger, loathing, and the ever-present embarrassment at being second-rate. Besting him had been a foolish dream. Charles’ fingers were curled around something other than Jack’s neck now, and upon closer inspection, Jack saw the scissor blades wrapped in his fist, cutting deep. Blood dripped slowly down his arm._

_Vane was indescribable in that moment. Less human and more human-shaped rage. But there was also fear, terror in the way he crouched and could not seem to let the instruments go. That long hair had fallen over his wild eyes. His face was an animal’s._

_“For fuck’s sake, Charles,” he’d said, and gone to get bandages._

 

Jack nodded. “He was the bravest man I ever knew.” There, the easiest judgment. Charles Vane defied chains, guns and knives, warships, Captain Flint, England, and even death. No amount of pain could ever have stopped him.

Yet there was more to it. He began again, “Not without fear, just… unwilling to let it diminish him.” That was harder to say. That brought Charles back to him--

 

_Charles called him back. “Don’t bother,” he'd hissed, and ripped a worn sheet into shreds to wrap his hand. The scissors clattered to the ground. Jack flinched. Then he sat next to Charles, timidly at first, wondering if he was welcome, wondering what he’d done._

_“You’ll bruise,” Charles murmured. That voice of his always induced shivers. It was low, coarse, but something about it went straight to Jack’s veins. His heart was about to beat itself out of his chest._

_Jack scoffed. “You think so?” His gaze could not leave Charles’ hands. Even wrapped, Jack could trace every finger with his eyes. He still felt where each had pressed into his yielding flesh._

_And then Charles pressed them there again, and Jack flinched again, and blushed, and Charles sighed. Charles, though, he was so gentle, running his thumb across each blossoming bruise. Golden tan over black and blue. Jack imagined it like a ship running through stormy waves. Closing his eyes, he leaned back and allowed--welcomed, even--this, whatever it was._

_Silence hung comfortably between them. Jack, a man of many words, and Charles, a man of very few, always found a balance that befit them well. Jack usually filled their silences, but this one needed a different storyteller. There was only breathing. Then, quietly, “You want to know why.”_

 

“Loyal, to a fault.” Loyal to pirates, loyal to himself, to Edward Teach (even if at times it seemed otherwise).

To Jack.

 

_Jack peered sideways at him and pressed his mouth into a firm line. Charles scowled. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”_

_When Jack smiled, just a little, so did Charles._

 

He had to catch himself then to beat down the tears that wanted to show. One sharp breath was all he afforded in front of this stranger before he continued. “And in a world where honesty is so regularly and so casually disregarded…”

 

_Charles leaned against the side of his bed. He and Jack sat side-by-side, and Jack missed his hands on him. So he settled on opening his eyes and outlining Charles’ impressive profile with his curious eyes._

_The captain took a deep breath. He seemed to have fallen away to another place and time. No longer completely with Jack, but still anchoring himself there as he dug into the floorboards with his blunt nails. “I was a slave, Jack.”_

_“I know.” Bewildered, Jack turned to Charles and knocked his knuckles against his elbow._

_Faster than the wind, Charles snatched Jack’s hand from his arm, though he did not let it go. Instead, he brought it to the nape of his neck, and then up. Jack felt the transition from rough skin to soft hair with a shiver. “It’s difficult to work like this,” he supplied. Jack, a little lost in the way Charles’ calloused fingers felt around his own, could not follow._

_He said as much and Charles chuckled. “They cut it. Shaved it, sometimes. We weren’t boys of free will, we were livestock, and livestock are shorn when their hair grows out.”_

_Perhaps it was the great swell of pity that compelled him, or the complete shock of it all, but Jack surged forward and caught Charles in his arms. Charles started, then stiffened, then gradually allowed himself to relax within Jack’s embrace. The captain craned his neck to the side and touched his forehead to Jack’s. Their breaths mingled between them, faster and shorter than either cared to admit._

_“Fuck. Charles, I didn’t, I--”_

_“Shut up.” He was as rough and rude as ever. “Now you do.”_

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Fuck you, Jack.”_

 

Lydia smiled, and Jack wondered if she knew, just a little. The control he exhibited over his facial features was unremarkable, and any truly perceptive person could see the way his heart would stop and start and yearn as he spoke of his captain.

Her smile widened, and something about it made Jack sick. “I heard he cut off a man’s head,” she started, all sadistic pleasure. Jack listened to the rest with a gnawing feeling of resentment outweighing his earlier elation. When he tried to inform her of that particular legend’s complications, her words rushed right past him like stray shrapnel. Each embellished tidbit struck his skin with similar irritation.

“He was truly an animal.”

 

_Charles Vane once allowed Jack to sleep in his bed when he was lonely; Anne had run off somewhere to train in knifeplay and left Jack to fitful sleep. “You’re keeping me up,” Charles grumbled, and dragged his quartermaster to his room. Warm arms encasing him, and long hair tickling his neck were things to dream of._

_When drunk, Charles tended to be furious. Yet on rare occasions he was either morose or nostalgic. Anne and Jack listened to old stories in front of fireplaces and assured him they would follow him anywhere._

_He was not a lone wolf, Charles Vane. The three rangers were constant, capable companions. Charles Vane was beside Jack through nearly every swordfight of his life, and he was beside him as they cleaned their wounds and touched each other’s scars._

_Yes, truly an animal._

 

Jack was called to see Mr. Guthrie, but he could not leave Lydia to her misguided fantasies. “Charles Vane was a good man. What I told you is the truth,” he insisted.

Not all of it, of course. The truth, Jack Rackham knew, was that he had loved Charles Vane. He had loved every insult, every day. He had loved the boy he met, the man he was, and the monument he became. But--

“The truth isn’t nearly as interesting.”

 

**x**

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song "The Memory" by Mayday Parade.


End file.
